50 Women Game-Changers in Food Cookies

teatime with Martha's peanut butter cookies

What an incredible woman! Wow!

 I have just been reading up about Martha Stewart and I am bowled over.  She is this week’s Game-Changer and I can quite see why. Not being American, I did still know of her but not the full extent , not by any stretch.  Her name for me was synonymous with being the quintessential homemaker but I see that her talents are endless. You should read up about her yourself as hers is such an amazing success story.

The  fact that she actually was found guilty on several counts in  March 2004 and spent 5 months in jail, then came out and continued going from strength to strength all points to her being one formidable woman.When I read that in May 1995 New York magazine had her on their cover as ‘the definitive American woman of our time’, I thought to myself that I should find a recipe that was American through and through. I saw that her many cookbooks seemed to be mostly about baking: cakes, cookies and desserts and the idea of cupcakes came into my head. However I would probably find those difficult to take over to Daughter No 2 tomorrow if I gave them a fabulous swirl of a topping so then I thought of cookies.  

And to me American cookies means either chocolate chip or peanut butter.  Since I have already got my own choc chip cookie recipe, and since a peanut butter cookie recipe was staring me in the face, I thought yes the perfect choice! You can’t get much more American than that, I thought!

Next, the peanut butter. Now, this is not something that is regularly eaten here – as you can imagine in this land of olives and white cheese! It’s available but it’s disgusting as it is SWEET. I knew  however that I had a jar of SunPat at the back of my larder ( Son Cem had brought it back from  NY one time) – but was it crunchy? I ran to the kitchen to have a look and lo and behold it was! So my choice was sealed: Martha Stewart’s Peanut Butter Cookies it was!

From Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia with metric measurements added by me:

Ingredients

Makes 48

1 ½ cups/350g/12oz crunchy peanut butter

1 cup/225g packed light brown sugar

½ cup/110g/4oz softened unsalted butter (1 stick)

1 large egg

1 ½ cups/350g/12oz all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

Method

·         Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C.

·         In a medium bowl, put the flour and baking powder; set aside.

·         In a large bowl, beat peanut butter, sugar, and butter until smooth. Beat in egg. Gradually add flour mixture, beating to combine.

sugar, crunchy peanut butter, and regular butter

·         Pinch off dough by the tablespoon; roll into balls. Place 2 inches/5cm apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Using a fork, press balls in a crisscross pattern, flattening to a ½ in thickness.

single unbaked cookie with crisscross pattern

·         Bake cookies, rotating halfway through, until lightly golden, 18-22 mins. Cool cookies on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.

I do realise that many of you probably make these with your eyes closed but I was very pleased with them!

BTW I only got 24 out of this mixture and I don’t think they are unduly big.

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Do check out the following blogs which will also be featuring a Martha Stewart recipe today:

Mary from One Perfect Bite

Val from More Than Burnt Toast

Joanne from Eats Well With Others

Taryn from Have Kitchen Will Feed

Heather from Girlichef

Susan from The Spice Garden

I hope you are enjoying this as much as we are!

See you next Friday for the next Woman Game-Changer in Food!